In the West Village, Modern Boutique Owners Who Live Where They Work

Slide Show | Home and Work Inside the living space of Michael and Caroline Venture — and their new boutique in the same building.

Nicholas Calcott

June 16, 2015

Home and Work

By ALEXIS CHEUNG

“We’re both innately solvers,” Michael Ventura, the founder and CEO of the strategy and design practice Sub Rosa, says of himself and his wife Caroline, the jewelry designer of Brvtvs. He’s speaking of their traits, both at work — Sub Rosa specializes in elegant and efficient business solutions while Brvtvs counters the jeweled cacophony with restrained pieces — and at home — which shares an address with their new store, and abuts their individual businesses.

Two previously vacant mid-1800s West Village buildings literally divide into “home” and “work” for the Venturas. Sub Rosa occupies the entirety of 353 West 12th Street, while their new home furnishings boutique, Calliope, and their living space remain on the first and third floors of 349 West 12th Street, respectively. Though connected by stairwells, each space subsists as its own ecosystem. “We have a separate entrance for our apartment,” Caroline clarifies. “When you leave the office, you leave.” Yet abundant natural light, exposed ochre bricks, industrial sliding doors and well-placed verdant shrubbery coalesce so the entire building has a cohesive, terrarium-like ambiance.

The Venturas’ home, a spacious former flophouse for sailors, is spotted with elegant, yet entirely unpretentious, signifiers of their solver mentality: a custom vertically or horizontally stacking bookshelf, a 12-person dining table that converts into a coffee table. “Both of us,” Caroline gestures, “generally have the mindset that it’s possible to have anything made.” And pieces suffused with history — a critter Caroline sculpted as a child, a 1920s console from a brass factory in Paris, a Little Richard record etched into an X-ray and once smuggled into Communist Russia — scatter in every room.

“We love the hunt,” Michael says of their tchotchkes. Their “made” and “found” proclivities carry over to Calliope, which stocks vintage, contemporary and bespoke goods. Customers can also purchase in-store “field trips” — artisanal classes with local makers — or just hang out and read a magazine. “We really want people to come in and hang out as a community space,” Caroline says. “We love that interaction between people.”

Calliope’s catch phrase, “It should be fun,” started as a joke for opening a store. “But in it,” Michael says, “there was this nice whimsy and kernel that it shouldn’t be a chore to decorate your house. Nothing should be so precious and rarified.”

Calliope is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 am – 7 pm and Sunday from 11 am – 6 pm at 349 West 12th Street, welcometocalliope.com.